Chicago Freedom Movement

The Chicago Freedom Movement, also known as the Chicago Open Housing Movement, was led by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., James Bevel[1][2] and Al Raby. The movement included a large rally, marches, and demands to the City of Chicago. These specific demands covered a wide range of areas besides open housing, and included quality education, transportation and job access, income and employment, health, wealth generation, crime and the criminal justice system, community development, tenants rights, and quality of life. The Chicago Freedom Movement was the most ambitious civil rights campaign in the North of the United States, lasted from mid-1965 to early 1967, and is largely credited with inspiring the 1968 Fair Housing Act.[3][4]

Contents

History1

Demands of the Chicago Freedom Movement2

Real Estate Boards and Brokers2.1

Banks and Savings Institutions2.2

The Mayor and City Council2.3

Political Parties2.4

Chicago Housing Authority and the Chicago Dwelling Association2.5

Business2.6

1968 Fair Housing Act3

See also4

Further reading5

References6

External links7

History

The Chicago Freedom Movement represented the alliance of the nonviolence and nonviolent direct action could bring about social change outside of the South. Since 1962, the CCCO had harnessed anger over racial inequality, especially in the public schools, in the city of Chicago to build the most sustained local civil rights movement in the North. The activism of the CCCO pulled SCLC to Chicago, as did the work of the AFSC's Kale Williams, Bernard Lafayette, David Jehnsen and others, owing to the decision by SCLC's Director of Direct Action, James Bevel, to come to Chicago to work with the AFSC project on the city's West Side.

The Chicago Freedom Movement declared its intention to end [6] Other guests included Mahalia Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and Peter, Paul and Mary. By late July the Chicago Freedom Movement was staging regular rallies outside of Real Estate offices and marches into all-white neighborhoods on the city's southwest and northwest sides. The hostile and sometimes violent response of local whites,[7] and the determination of civil rights activists to continue to crusade for an open housing law, alarmed City Hall and attracted the attention of the national press. During one demonstration Dr. King said that even in Alabama and Mississippi he had not encountered mobs as hostile to Blacks' civil rights as those in Chicago.[8]

In mid-August, high-level negotiations began between city leaders, movement activists, and representatives of the Chicago Real Estate Board. On August 26, after the Chicago Freedom Movement had declared that it would march into

Further reading

See also

The 1968 Fair Housing Act was passed by Congress as a direct result of both the 1966 Chicago Open Housing Movement and as a response to the assassination of Dr. King.[4]

1968 Fair Housing Act

Basic headcounts, including white, Negro and Latin American, by job classification and income level, made public.

Racial steps to upgrade and to integrate all departments, all levels of employments.

Business

Program to rehabilitate present public housing including such items as locked lobbies, restrooms in recreation areas, increased police protection and child care centers on every third floor.

Program to increase vastly the supply of low-cost housing on a scattered basis for both low and middle income families.

Chicago Housing Authority and the Chicago Dwelling Association

The requirement that precinct captains be residents of their precincts.

Political Parties

Publication of headcounts of whites, Negroes and Latin Americans for all city departments and for all firms from which city purchases are made.

Revocation of contracts with firms that do not have a full scale fair employment practice.

Creation of a citizens review board for grievances against police brutality and false arrests or stops and seizures.

Ordinance giving ready access to the names of owners and investors for all slum properties.

A saturation program of increased garbage collection, street cleaning, and building inspection services in the slum properties.

The Mayor and City Council

Public statements of a nondiscriminatory mortgage policy so that loans will be available to any qualified borrower without regard to the racial composition of the area.

Banks and Savings Institutions

Public statements that all listings will be available on a nondiscriminatory basis.

Real Estate Boards and Brokers

On July 10, 1966 Dr. King placed a list of demands on the door of the Chicago City Hall in order to gain leverage with city leaders.[11]

Demands of the Chicago Freedom Movement

After the open-housing marches and Summit agreements, the overall Chicago Freedom Movement lost much of its focus and momentum when, by early 1967, Martin Luther King, James Bevel, and SCLC had trained their energies on other projects, mainly – for King and Bevel – the anti-Vietnam war movement.

[10]

This article was sourced from Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. World Heritage Encyclopedia content is assembled from numerous content providers, Open Access Publishing, and in compliance with The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR), Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., Public Library of Science, The Encyclopedia of Life, Open Book Publishers (OBP), PubMed, U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and USA.gov, which sources content from all federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial government publication portals (.gov, .mil, .edu). Funding for USA.gov and content contributors is made possible from the U.S. Congress, E-Government Act of 2002.

Crowd sourced content that is contributed to World Heritage Encyclopedia is peer reviewed and edited by our editorial staff to ensure quality scholarly research articles.

By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. World Heritage Encyclopedia™ is a registered trademark of the World Public Library Association, a non-profit organization.